You're going some place without me, my life.
You're rolling away.
And I'm still waiting to make my move.
You've taken the battle somewhere
Abandoning me on the way.
I never followed, I stay.
Where you are leading me,
I can't plainly see.
The very little that I want,
you never bring to me.
Because of this emptiness, I want
So many things, almost the infinite ...
Because of this emptiness,
that you never fill.

Exquisite, Roxana. I love the poem and it hits home and will for many, I think. The thirst we cannot quench, the itch we cannot scratch, the lives we are given and cannot appreciate...is this a growing problem with our time? Have people felt like this, this strongly, always?

It is different than looking at an ocean and feeling an urge to know what lies on the horizon, and having a surge of adventure that propels movement? I think it is different; there is less "I" involved...

These images are like seeing something in front of you but having your hand pass through ether when you reach to touch. That is why they are perfect for the poem.

I'm entranced by the first image. Frosted, like a glass; sketchy, as if done in pencil or charcoal; hinting rather than defining. One's life hints at what one might become as it is being lived and only in retrospect can we see how it has defined us.

Follow the link below for an image that somehow, for me, connects to your first photo here:

As Lydia suggests, the images seem illusory. As though that which we long for, thirst for, is a mirage, of sorts...or some water for one's heart or soul we claw across the desert of life in search of. How can water help me, when I thirst for what is true? I could be water and drink myself, but that would never do.

You've made me so thirsty with this I'm going to have to go back to la Selle for another drink... though was just there again yesterday, and also have some photos of beer in the glass which speak of thirst and thirst quenched... merci Roxana...

I have had this thirst for most of my life. It wasn't until I embraced the emptiness that it had a chance of being quenched. I am profoundly moved by the ethereal quality of these images and for me, feel they communicate beautifully an essence of being caught in a space between this world and the next.

"le petit peu que je veux" -- it seems that such a small gift from the world would make such a fulfillment, a closure, but the gap is still there, the wound never quite heals before the light tears it open...

the first photo tears me open ... the proffered glass of light, within reach of the right gesture, dissolving, sublime ...

Ha, she scoffs at his suggestion! What intransigence. All she can muster instead is ecstatic light (a bombycinous light), so whist and sedate, like an entombed chrysalis. Did she ever read his book, The Lexicon of the Moth? She would probably find it hideously boring and largely devoid of romantic passages, the kind she so prizes.

But there is, in this instance, a certain pathology in his assessment of her photography.

2) Typically, he views her posts agape, goes away (paces up and down the rut covered pavement for days and hours, and here he's thinking of Poe again), writes a few clumsy words, and then returns to comment. However, in the case of grayscaled images, he is known to misremember them as he writes, or more specifically, supplant subtle tones of black and white with a metamorphosis of exotic color (splashes and swatches);

3) The original atmospheric conditions at the time she took the photo were such that the glass and environs were in fact imbued in a bombycinous light. Roxana is in a position to be able to shed light, pun fully intended, on this mystery.

4) His color blindness is far more serious than he is willing to admit.

Lydia, what a wonderful description of the pictures... and yes, the philosophical questions you raise are very important, i do think it is different, this feeling of metaphysical thirst, the germans have such a beautiful (of course untranslatable) word for it: Weltschmerz, world-pain or world-weariness... (wikipedia in english says: a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind). and i also think all people have experienced it, throughout our history...

Flipi, this dove-image, lost in the snow, hasn't ceased to follow me ever since... yes, pulsating with light, one with it...

yes, Lynne, i think i know what you mean, and i find this way of understanding my pictures and my post extremely interesting and stimulating, i hadn't seen them in this context. i am so happy you love the first picture, i worked on it a bit, it wasn't easy to get the right balance between the subtle shadows and the light...

Dan, that is exactly it, a mirage - and it is perhaps the greatest illusion of all, but i think it is good that it exists, it makes us all (or at least those aware of it) keep trying and searching, which is the only way to be alive.

Michael T., yes. i know. so touched, that you came to tell me this, so openly and honestly.

haha, Owen, i see what you mean, yes - the thirst and quenching it - will continue, but no beer here on the Bridge, of course, tea, and it shouldn't come as a surprise to you !!! :-)(you will see in the next post :-)

Stickup, i have nothing to add here, what you said expresses exactly my feeling, and my thirst, and my quest... thank you, dear friend.

Dee, the biggest paradox, yes... there is no way to escape it, except through art, temporarily (a Schopenhauer thought here, i admit). or by following a spiritual path, for those who are able to.

James - "within reach of the right gesture" - as the Graal, within reach of the right question (you know how much i love this Parsifal-myth) - yet unlike him, we always fail, no? or does success lie only in not proffering a gesture at all?

Prospero, does the crux of your comment lie in a subtle discontentment with b/w-photography, in general? (she says, still struggling with the 3rd or 4th point :-P). but isn't light that which makes all colours dissolve in it, absorbs them? :-) i am just teasing a colour-blind person :-P but no, (or yet), i know that you love colour photography and what role colour plays for your music (as paradoxically as it might seem). for Nabokov too, incidentally, that you so much admire...